That's good to know... looking at the news footage it was quite a performance Mother Nature put on there, what with trees down everywhere and numerous buildings without rooves... power lines down and outages across the city.  I went through on similar back in the mid-80s when I lived on the Northside of Brisbane.  Now that was one scary storm, not that I could show any fear.  I had to put on a brave front for my kids and stay calm so they didn't get too scared and panic.

As for.....

 I have absolutely no idea what that refers to... could be a sporting event for all I know, but I haven't watched any sport since the Gabba test so it's all mystery to me.  I'm sure you will enlighten me, however.

Jackson....Director of LOTR and the Hobbit...

Machine's mostly behaving....WEI won't work due to DDR4...too new/fast/good .... sometimes when rebooting it gets to the loading screen but without the twirling logo...IT Crowd's solution fixes it....'turn it off and turn it on again'...and 'start windows normally'. - that's gotta be a BIOS fix that'll turn up eventually...but not important once all is installed and running anyway...

The M.2 drive partitions need to be backed up [imaged] in case of memory loss - but I run a UPS that gives me a clean shutdown so I should be fine.

Terry's happy too...has her Galaxy Note Pro .... [slightly more portable than my lump]...

Ah, should've guessed.  And here I was thinking something sports related.  So glad the GAYFL wasn't involved.

As for Jackson's latest, I will wait until I can get it on BluRay as I'm not fussed on going to cinemas these days.  I have the LOTR trilogy and the first 2 hobbit movies, so I may as well complete the collection.

Yes, I am sure there will be BIOS fixes for the niggly little things regarding boot and etc.  But niggling things are what we get for living on the bleeding edge when it comes to PC tech... some stuff needs a bit of tweaking to get things working properly.  As for backing up the M.2 partitions, that's always a good idea whether you have UPS or not.  Drives can fail/become corrupted for any number of reasons, so I have at least two backups of my OS drive... one is just the clean install with all required drivers and no clutter, in the event I want to go back that far, and the other is an incremantal backup with all my programs to save having to go through all that crap again.

I don't know much about the newer versions but my sister had an earlier model and was pleased with it, but like me, she wanted to go 'all' Windows 8 to sync all her devices and handed the Galaxy down to my niece. 

As for your "lump", maybe you should see somebody about that.

With 8TBs in 6 physical and 2 extra partitions I have 'several' backup options in place, as well as a separate 2TB drive in a fire-proof safe....

Terry's Tab is the 12.2" Note Pro ...big enough for even her to see....and clear as a bell running quite high res.... and thankfully NOT win8.

That said, I'll most likely be switching my lump to Win10 once that's mostly bug-free. [and released].

In one of those Benchmarking sites my machine is referred to as a 'Battleship' which sounds more positive than one test's 'tree stump'...

I have a 3Tb external with several backup images, some even of OSes I no longer have installed, though I might get rid of some of those when next I hook it up to create another of an existing drive/OS.

My tablet is 13.6" cos I'm an old fart with failing eyesight... well it's not as good as it used to be.  Thankfully it IS Windows 8.1 PRO, and not that IOS or Android crap.  And yes, I've had a dabble on both and simply liked neither.  In fact, mine's not merely a tablet.  It comes with a detatchable keyboard and is used as a laptop with a full OS when connected, or as a tablet with a full OS when not.  I have the best of both worlds

I will likely do the same once it is released., but for now I am more than happy with Win 8.1.  It behaves for me exactly like Win 7 only faster, and I never see Metro, that deadly UI everyone hates, unless I call it up.  True, Win 8's flat GUI leaves alot to be desired, but then so has every other Windows OS, so it's no different to me dressing up Win 7 to make it more palatable.... except that it is a superior OS under the hood.

'Tree stump' my arse.  That's a fechen insult and should be dealt with accordingly.  Is there a forum attached to this site?  If so, I'd go there if I were you and let them have it in no uncertain terms.  I mean, what mongrels to say such a thing.

'tree stump' wasn't my machine...that site had me as 'battleship' ...

Once I have 7 the way I like it I'll dump my old HD of the 'transferred' 7 OS and put 10 on it as dual boot...it's an SSD so won't be too dissimilar to the M.2's 7.

I tend to keep away from 8 on principle....the principle that MS shot themselves in the foot and all their users were simply collateral ....

Well that's orright, then.  And battleship is sort of okay, but frankly I'd add Gakaxy Class to the front of it.  Hmmm, that sounds more impressive, befitting of its status as a high-end rig.  As for 'tree stump', well that'd have to be one heck of a poor machine to rate that insult.  It'd be akin to calling a Ferrari a glorified roller skate if it weren't accurate.

I stay away from hookers on principle... the principle being I can't afford one.. and if they got it for nothing, then why should I pay for a bit of a loan.

I do agree that MS probably rushed Win 8 out of the blocks too quickly, UI-wise - Metro ISN'T for the desktop PC - but beneath that it is an excellent OS with great stability, safety and performance.  Why somebody wouldn't want that, well it beats me, but each to his/her own, as they say.

My OSs were from TechNet...so I have several for 7 Ult, Pro, etc, but only one for 8 ...and that's on my laptop.

 8 certainly isn't worth forking out coin for...not with 10 just around the corner...makes far more sense to hang out for an OS that's done 'right' ...

Addmittedly, Win 8 wasn't the greatest when first released, but the arrival of 8.1 certainly made a difference and now it is a solid OS.  Having said that, I would not recommend purchasing a copy this far out from the release of Win 10.  I do find it strange, though, given MS wanted to promote Win 8 and have it running on more machines, that Technet included just one Win 8 license.

As for MS doing Win 10 right, I am expecting good things from it.  Just little snippets of information I've read along the way suggest that 10 will be something rather special, possibly MS' best OS to date.  Well I certainly hope so.

Oh, and so much for the desktop PC being on its last legs and being replaced by tablets.  According to figures from companies like Intel, Nvidia and AMD, not to mention ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, etc, the number of desktop PC builders is increasing.  Sure I like my tablet and phone, but neither will ever replace my trusty old desktop PCs... or the new one.

Speaking of my big beastie, I still haven't migrated the OS over to the M.2 drive as yet.  Yesterday was one distraction after another, with real life placing its demands on my time and attention, and the day before plagued by vertigo and nausea.  Today is better thus far [touch wood] and I hope to achieve it this afternoon.

TechNet changed and has become a little too pricey to continue subscription...so I'd only added one key for 8 prior.  I think I would have had 4 otherwise....2 Pro...2 standard.

Curiously...when I imaged the old OS across to the new machine I activated it with the original 7 key....and now have ir running activated on both machines...same key.

Even a new install as it is now and that's still the case.  It seems the TechNet keys are not restricted to the one install.

On a side note...I installed the dev preview of 8 into a VM [not activated as in theory it's expired] and it's running...and its WEI in the VM comes in at 4.something....[graphics limit].  7 still cannot handle DDR4 ... but you never know...there might be a fix one day...

F1 2010 runs like a dream [everything maxed]....it's like actually being there.  Now if they'd only modelled the Officials properly I'd see myself in it...

Well as usual I got distracted again and didn't get the OS cloned over to my M.2 drive, but not to worry, I had a slight change of plans.

The distraction was fishing my Thermaltake Chaser AMD rig out of storage to retrieve important data stored on its SSDs.  That took me half the day, and by the time I'd gone down town to fill a couple of prescriptions the day was pretty much spent, so messing with the Level 10 Intel rig to clone an OS just wasn't going to happen. A simple enough job without expending too much energy, yes, but I just couldn't be stuffed after a somewhat long and energy intensive day sorting shit out.

Anyway, I got to thinking overnight and the change of plan was hatched to install the M.2 in the AMD machine instead.  While it is lightning fast already, possibly even faster than my Intel rig, I just want to see how much difference the M.2 would make, speed and performance-wise.  Besides, it currently doesn't have an OS installed, and the Intel one does, so I figured it'd make better sense to do a clean install of a previously unused copy of Win 8 Pro on it.. 

Hehe, I knew it was a good investment to pick myself up and extra copy while they were still going for 40 bucks.  Now it's just a matter of getting the AMD rig out of it's box, connecting a few things here and there, and away I go.

Last two days have been 'interesting'....

Define 'interesting'....

Oh god, we're all going to die?

Something fragged my registry.

Might have been 'advanced system care' by iobit ... but equally might have been an ill-advised game/demo install [I did several].

Either way, firstly I couldn't boot...then once I'd got around that I got as far as a 'blank' login...ie no user input.

Part of the solution was to manually restore hive backups...

Got into Windows again....only to have that side by side failure of all-things Office [and cleverly True Image too].

Chased my tail reloading dot net and vis studio ... got me nowhere slowly...

Booted into old OS ... burnt recovery disk for Acronis....

Restored to Saturday.

Did I mention Sys Restore got me back to the no login....where I'd been 24 hours earlier?

Acronis came through for me....

...only to discover something [still] had fragged MS update.... it refused to be an option in Win Update... so no dotnet or Office, etc updates were coming...

More research....

Solved.

couple of hundred meg of updates later....and I think I might be getting there.

First I'd noticed the error was Monday...about 10 am....

...it's now 3.20 PM Tuesday.....

Good thing I like alcohol.....

Depends on when you started drinking I guess.

If it was A LOT on Sunday, then there's yer answer.

If it was SOME to calm the nerves on Monday AFTER the discovery, then the problem was/is real.

Seriously, though, I do recall you having a similar issue with Windows/MS updates and sys restore some time ago.  When it was tracked down as to why, your BITS [Background Intelligent Transfer Service] was missing.  Don't know if it's relevant in this case or not, but I seem to recall yrag suggesting a repair install from the Win 7 disc when sfc /scannow didn't restore it.  It's something to think about should the problem persist, cos it seems like some system files may either be corrupted or missing.

Anyway, . I am still no closer to getting my AMD machine back online because I am missing some parts to complete rebuilding it.  I have them but it's a right royal pain in the arse locating them when all that kind of stuff is packed up and in storage. 

While I can access the crates/boxes alright, I've just not been up for any heavy-ish lifting of late with arthritic and lower back pain.  Most people with arthritis will say that cold aggravates it for them, but I find that I suffer more with the Summer heat, and just recently we've been going through a bit of a heat wave up here, with temps in the high 30s to low 40s....  it's just not the kind of weather to be trying to exert myself in.

Oh well, it's not like I need it that urgently.  I've got my big beastie so a couple more days won't hurt any.

Oh yeah, and I like alcohol, too... though I don't know that it likes me too much.  It is said that alcohol is not good for bones/bone conditions, not that I let that stop me having the odd beer or 6 now and then.  In fact, it's 4,13pm and I'm on my 3rd of the day... and after an 11 year abstinence from hard liquor, I'll  occasionally have a couple of bourbon and cokes of an evening before bed.. not to get pissed or anything, just to help me wind down a bit.

Anyhow, it's refill time.

Nope....curiously sfc says all is well....although that is now....not last week....go figure...

The issue with bits was thanks to Norton AV ....that'll never grace a machine of mine ever again.

This time the issue was a quite extensive 'glitch' in the registry that probably would have had me rewriting every line of it.

No thanks.  That's what images are for...

I've had sfc return an AOK result when in fact it wasn't, thus requiring a repair install from disc to remedy the issue.  In my case, sys restore, updates and other services were on the blink... like I couldn't call up Wordpad or other Windows Accessories.

Ditto!  I will never use anything Norton again.  Besides being too resource intensive, it takes up a lot of HDD space and tends to choke performance.  Well that was my experience and I have no desire to revisit it.  I've been quite happy with Avast over the years and see no reason to change at this time.

Well I managed to retrieve the parts I need to finish rebuillding the AMD rig, so will complete that sometime this evening.  I wouldn't have had to do so if I hadn't taken the parts for the Level 10 rig, but at the time I wanted to put all the higher-end stuff in it and use leftovers from previous upgrades to rebuild the cannibalised AMD rig. Oh well, it's the price I pay for constant tinkering to make each new rig the best I can and not have to buy all new to do it, though I shan't be compromising with this next build.

The next build will likely be my last major upgrade as it will be as high-end as I'll ever need or want.  Then maybe I can concentrate more on a few household items to help make life a little more comfortable.